I thought God was 7
It’s been nearly two years since everybody found out that God was a 14-year-old girl named Gwennie. And not just God, she was also Vishnu, Yahweh, Zeus, Odin, and whomever else people felt like praying to.
As an atheist, Gwennie was kind of an unpleasant surprise for me. It’s one thing to bet on the wrong horse, it’s completely another to deny the existence of horses.
My first experience with Gwennie was in front of my house. She had her hair caught in the passenger door of a minivan that was parked there. There was nobody around, so I asked if somebody was helping her. That’s when she started sobbing. I insisted on helping her, partly because I believed at the time that not helping a child in this situation might be a felony. Since I don’t own scissors as a personal rule and a stipulation of my parole, I used toenail clippers to gnaw away at her hair.
“Shanks, mishter,” she sniffled, as she walked away.
The next day was the holy crap moment, when every single person on the planet realized that they had encountered Gwennie the day before in similar situations to my own, whether they got her tongue unstuck from a light post in Finland or helped her up after she was knocked unconscious by a coconut in American Samoa.
Gwennie had a speech impediment, wore a retainer, and had a cast on her left arm with hearts on it. She was absolutely awe-inspiring, like a puppy with an eye patch and a tiny little crutch.
How’d I, like many others, find out she was the Supreme Being? She told me.
“I created the heaven and the urf,” Gwennie read from a card. “I’m all-powerful and om… How do you say zhis?”
“Omniscent, Gwennie.”
“On-me-science.”
“Omniscent. It means you’re all knowing, Gwennie.”
“Shanks, mishter, I dinnit know zat.”
Like I said, she was teeth-grindingly adorable.
Sure, everybody had questions. Big questions such as what did the dinosaurs do wrong, why is there so much evil in the world, can you point at the chosen people, and does your arrival mean that this is the Final Judgement, but then Gwennie fell off her bike, broke her collarbone, and had to wear one of those head halos for six months, and nobody wanted to bother her.
One subject never mentioned by anybody was Jesus. Sure, Gwennie had created the heavens and Earth and everything that inhabited them, but the idea that a 14-year-old girl had a son was kind of wrong. Plus, you tended to forget those larger theological questions when Gwennie sent out the cutest all-cap text messages like “SUPRDUPR” or “KITTIES!”
So, what did religions do after they picked their collective jaws off the ground? Did they disband, now that there was one truth that was plain to everybody. Nope, they all tried to grab a special piece of Gwennie’s heart by appealing to the things she liked best. So that’s why one major religion became the Wizards of Gryffindor after the Harry Potter books. They weren’t alone, other religions morphed into Charm Braceletists, Nail Polishers, and the Church of Jewelry Box Ballerinas. Of course, some religions were always going to get it completely wrong. For example, the Latter Day Unicornists creating an entire religion based on one unicorn poster that was eventually replaced with a poster featuring the kids from that Glee show. Worse was the Church of Universalist Clowns betting that all children love clowns.
Some people complained quietly about an entire culture based on the whims and desires of 14-year-olds, but that was happening long before Gwennie showed up.
If there was a problem with Gwennie, it was her best friend, Marcie, who was loud and laughed like bagpipes. When I paid Gwennie $10 to do yard work, goddamned Marcie ran over a brand new hose with the mower. The two of them thought that was pretty darn funny.
Of course, two years ago seems like a distant memory now. Now we’re standing on the eve of Gwennie’s Sweet Sixteen party, and while I wouldn’t say the streets are running red with blood, they have certainly been stained by blood and have had to be pressure washed.
What happened? Gary. Gary is a 17-year-old jerk, who everybody thought was a cool guy and now realizes is a complete tool. He was supposed to take Gwennie to the Sophomore Graduation Dance. I think we could argue that sophomores don’t graduate anything, but it’s the school district’s idea. Anyway, the night before this so-called graduation dance, Gary broke up with Gwennie for this girl Amelia. Apparently, Amelia’s flower of womanhood had bloomed a bit early.
If there’s a lesson in this it is don’t gamble the existence of all of reality, time, and space on a 17-year-old’s ability to keep his dick in his pants. That is a bet you will always lose.
After the Graduation Dance debacle, Gwennie got moody. She spent a lot of time on park benches, sullenly listening to her iPod. There weren’t cute text messages anymore. Instead you get prank phone calls and there is nothing worse than getting a call with the Supreme Being breathing heavily on the other end of the line.
She ditched Marcy for the cool kids. Needless to say, everybody misses Marcy and her terrible laugh.
Then Gwennie joined the JV cheerleading squad, which was really bad for everybody, because JV cheerleaders were like the four horseman of the Apocalypse, except there were 14 of them and they had less mercy.
For example, I didn’t see them coming when I was mowing the lawn last week and suddenly on of them starts yelling at me, “Hey you fat piece of chalk, put a shirt on!” They all laughed while screaming “Dance, marshmellow, dance!” Then they threw a Slurpee at me. And I couldn’t say a thing because the 15-year-old who created the universe was just standing there, sneering at me and popping her gum.
Some people believed that Gwennie would snap out of it eventually, that she was just hanging out with the wrong crowd. I didn’t know.
Trying to assuage her anger, religions dedicated themselves to giving Gwennie the best Sweet Sixteen party ever. There seemed to be a belief that the best party givers would get the best place in heaven.
So now we are going through the Party Planning Wars as religions are pitted against each other in an international battle for crepe paper, streamers, and conical hats.
This morning, I turned on CNN and watched an argument over a smoke machine between the Latter day Unicornists and Universalist Clowns that quickly devolved into bloodshed. If there is one thing scarier than an adult in a clown suit, it is a burning adult in a clown suit. Watching this, I asked myself why any of this was worth it. Who wanted to believe in a god like Gwennie? A god that was nice one day and in whose name people were burning clowns the next. Why would anyone want to bet on this horse? It made no sense to me. No sense at all.
Then, Gwennie appeared, sitting next to me on the couch typing furiously on her phone. I assumed that I didn’t have much time left.
That was confirmed when I got a text from her of a sideways frowny face. At least, she made eye contact when she deleted me from her Facebook friends.
I wondered what there was to say in my last moments of existence. And then the right words came to me.
“You owe me $10 for a hose.”
As an atheist, Gwennie was kind of an unpleasant surprise for me. It’s one thing to bet on the wrong horse, it’s completely another to deny the existence of horses.
My first experience with Gwennie was in front of my house. She had her hair caught in the passenger door of a minivan that was parked there. There was nobody around, so I asked if somebody was helping her. That’s when she started sobbing. I insisted on helping her, partly because I believed at the time that not helping a child in this situation might be a felony. Since I don’t own scissors as a personal rule and a stipulation of my parole, I used toenail clippers to gnaw away at her hair.
“Shanks, mishter,” she sniffled, as she walked away.
The next day was the holy crap moment, when every single person on the planet realized that they had encountered Gwennie the day before in similar situations to my own, whether they got her tongue unstuck from a light post in Finland or helped her up after she was knocked unconscious by a coconut in American Samoa.
Gwennie had a speech impediment, wore a retainer, and had a cast on her left arm with hearts on it. She was absolutely awe-inspiring, like a puppy with an eye patch and a tiny little crutch.
How’d I, like many others, find out she was the Supreme Being? She told me.
“I created the heaven and the urf,” Gwennie read from a card. “I’m all-powerful and om… How do you say zhis?”
“Omniscent, Gwennie.”
“On-me-science.”
“Omniscent. It means you’re all knowing, Gwennie.”
“Shanks, mishter, I dinnit know zat.”
Like I said, she was teeth-grindingly adorable.
Sure, everybody had questions. Big questions such as what did the dinosaurs do wrong, why is there so much evil in the world, can you point at the chosen people, and does your arrival mean that this is the Final Judgement, but then Gwennie fell off her bike, broke her collarbone, and had to wear one of those head halos for six months, and nobody wanted to bother her.
One subject never mentioned by anybody was Jesus. Sure, Gwennie had created the heavens and Earth and everything that inhabited them, but the idea that a 14-year-old girl had a son was kind of wrong. Plus, you tended to forget those larger theological questions when Gwennie sent out the cutest all-cap text messages like “SUPRDUPR” or “KITTIES!”
So, what did religions do after they picked their collective jaws off the ground? Did they disband, now that there was one truth that was plain to everybody. Nope, they all tried to grab a special piece of Gwennie’s heart by appealing to the things she liked best. So that’s why one major religion became the Wizards of Gryffindor after the Harry Potter books. They weren’t alone, other religions morphed into Charm Braceletists, Nail Polishers, and the Church of Jewelry Box Ballerinas. Of course, some religions were always going to get it completely wrong. For example, the Latter Day Unicornists creating an entire religion based on one unicorn poster that was eventually replaced with a poster featuring the kids from that Glee show. Worse was the Church of Universalist Clowns betting that all children love clowns.
Some people complained quietly about an entire culture based on the whims and desires of 14-year-olds, but that was happening long before Gwennie showed up.
If there was a problem with Gwennie, it was her best friend, Marcie, who was loud and laughed like bagpipes. When I paid Gwennie $10 to do yard work, goddamned Marcie ran over a brand new hose with the mower. The two of them thought that was pretty darn funny.
Of course, two years ago seems like a distant memory now. Now we’re standing on the eve of Gwennie’s Sweet Sixteen party, and while I wouldn’t say the streets are running red with blood, they have certainly been stained by blood and have had to be pressure washed.
What happened? Gary. Gary is a 17-year-old jerk, who everybody thought was a cool guy and now realizes is a complete tool. He was supposed to take Gwennie to the Sophomore Graduation Dance. I think we could argue that sophomores don’t graduate anything, but it’s the school district’s idea. Anyway, the night before this so-called graduation dance, Gary broke up with Gwennie for this girl Amelia. Apparently, Amelia’s flower of womanhood had bloomed a bit early.
If there’s a lesson in this it is don’t gamble the existence of all of reality, time, and space on a 17-year-old’s ability to keep his dick in his pants. That is a bet you will always lose.
After the Graduation Dance debacle, Gwennie got moody. She spent a lot of time on park benches, sullenly listening to her iPod. There weren’t cute text messages anymore. Instead you get prank phone calls and there is nothing worse than getting a call with the Supreme Being breathing heavily on the other end of the line.
She ditched Marcy for the cool kids. Needless to say, everybody misses Marcy and her terrible laugh.
Then Gwennie joined the JV cheerleading squad, which was really bad for everybody, because JV cheerleaders were like the four horseman of the Apocalypse, except there were 14 of them and they had less mercy.
For example, I didn’t see them coming when I was mowing the lawn last week and suddenly on of them starts yelling at me, “Hey you fat piece of chalk, put a shirt on!” They all laughed while screaming “Dance, marshmellow, dance!” Then they threw a Slurpee at me. And I couldn’t say a thing because the 15-year-old who created the universe was just standing there, sneering at me and popping her gum.
Some people believed that Gwennie would snap out of it eventually, that she was just hanging out with the wrong crowd. I didn’t know.
Trying to assuage her anger, religions dedicated themselves to giving Gwennie the best Sweet Sixteen party ever. There seemed to be a belief that the best party givers would get the best place in heaven.
So now we are going through the Party Planning Wars as religions are pitted against each other in an international battle for crepe paper, streamers, and conical hats.
This morning, I turned on CNN and watched an argument over a smoke machine between the Latter day Unicornists and Universalist Clowns that quickly devolved into bloodshed. If there is one thing scarier than an adult in a clown suit, it is a burning adult in a clown suit. Watching this, I asked myself why any of this was worth it. Who wanted to believe in a god like Gwennie? A god that was nice one day and in whose name people were burning clowns the next. Why would anyone want to bet on this horse? It made no sense to me. No sense at all.
Then, Gwennie appeared, sitting next to me on the couch typing furiously on her phone. I assumed that I didn’t have much time left.
That was confirmed when I got a text from her of a sideways frowny face. At least, she made eye contact when she deleted me from her Facebook friends.
I wondered what there was to say in my last moments of existence. And then the right words came to me.
“You owe me $10 for a hose.”
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